Why Vegetarian Diet?

Raising livestock is a very ineffective way of feeding the growing population of human beings.

In order to produce an overall 127,868 million pounds of meat a year, an annual 169,756 million pounds of food have to be fed to the animals. Now, one-third of the ice-free parts of the earth's surface are currently covered with pastures for cattle, while 33 per cent of the world's arable land is used to grow food for animals.

And so the 41,888 million pounds of food so wasted could feed millions of people instead and millions of animal lives would be saved.

For example, in South America, about 400 million hectares of soya crops are used as cattle feed. If this were to be used for human consumption, only 25 million hectares would be needed to feed the whole world.

According to another study, deforested land greatly contributed to global warming, raising temperatures up to 3 degrees Fahrenheit.

Croplands also tend to significantly heat up the environment, followed by pastures.

The carbon dioxide emissions of a cow for a year are the same as those of driving a car for 70,000 km.

On the other hand, many studies show that vegetarian foods greatly help in the prevention of heart disease, cancer and many other diet-related diseases.

Professor T. Colin Campbell, The China Study, which says that, "In the next 10 to 15 years, one of the things you're bound to hear is that animal protein is one of the most toxic nutrients of all that can be considered. Risk for disease goes up dramatically when even a little animal protein is added to the diet."

If you remember, in 2006, in the UK, serious health risk of eating the flesh of cows which were implanted with sex hormones was disclosed. Sex hormones make cows grow muscles more quickly. Implanted cows grow three pounds of meat per day - 20 per cent faster than naturally fed animals.

According to naturopathy, if we eat inorganic, denaturalized or chemically processed foods such as animals being fed with hormones, it would create a very thick layer of mucus that the body cannot eliminate it. Thus the immune system is not able to operate in this thick layer and fight against the outside enemies. And so it is very detrimental to our body and is the seed of disease causing.

Clearly, it is wise to change to a vegetarian diet for good. It is good not only for your health, but also for our environment.